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February 6, 2008

Freddie Bishop is indicted on new murder charge

Alfred "Freddie" Bishop, the convicted killer who spent 33 years at the Adult Correctional Institutions for murdering a close friend, has been indicted today on a new charge of murder, one count of burglary and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon.

Bishop, 65, of 61 Hollywood Ave., Warwick, is accused of murdering Gabriel Medeiros, 35, in Warwick on June 28 last year. He was also indicted with burglarizing a house and assaulting two people using a handgun with intent to commit murder and/or robbery.

Authorities now accuse Bishop of fatally shooting Medeiros and wounding Medeiros' brother and sister-in-law during a late-night burglary in June. Police have said family attempted to fight off their intruder, and the intruder then opened fire.

Documents disclosed that DNA from a bloody ski mask matched a sample taken from Bishop.

Bishop, who had been released from the Adult Correctional Institutions, had been out of prison for a little more than 10 months when police charged him in the Medeiros case.

The Statewide Grand Jury handed up the indictment today naming Bishop, who is slated for arraignment in Kent County Superior Court on Feb. 22.

Bishop was sent to prison for the December 1973 shotgun death of a friend, James Dunn.

In a 1993 Journal profile of Bishop, it said Warwick police found him a couple of hours later and that the next day he was taken to maximum security prison. The profile also said Bishop controlled a wing of the prison as a "heavy" and that he'd once been a partner of a mobster who was at that time in controlling another wing of the prison.

Another profile reported that corrections officials in 1978 sent Bishop and 14 other inmates deemed to be wielding control inside the prison out of state. Then-Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy said at the time that “guards and inmates live in constant mortal fear for their lives.”

Bishop was in prisons in Pennsylvania, Maine and New Hampshire over the next several years. He returned to the Adult Correctional Institutions, in Cranston, in 1989 from Pennsylvania. In 1993 various officials and law enforcers presented a unified front in trying to block plans to parole Bishop.

In 2005, the Parole Board recommended releasing Bishop and he was eventually released.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney, with Journal archival reports

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 4:26 PM | Permalink

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